Brian May Reveals He Was ‘Kind of Going Out’ With Mary Austin Before She Dated Freddie Mercury

After seeing the news that actress Lucy Boynton was cast in the upcoming Queen biopic as late singer Freddie Mercury's longtime companion Mary Austin, fans wondered whether the film would focus on the pair's relationship. According to guitarist Brian May, the answer seems to be yes, and there may be more to the story than many realized.

"Strangely enough, Mary was the girl that I picked out as somebody fabulous, and I was kind of going out with her," May told Yahoo! Music. "And Freddie came up to me one day and said, ‘Are you serious with Mary? Can I ask her out?’ And he did, and they were lovers for a long time."

As Queen fans are no doubt well aware, Mercury and Austin's romance eventually ended, but they remained close until the end of his life; in fact, she was a major beneficiary of his fortune after he died — and reportedly entrusted with his ashes, the location of which has remained a closely guarded secret for decades.

Yet despite the more sensational aspects of the story, May insisted the Bohemian Rhapsody movie will lean on the pair's relationship as a way of telling the singer's very human story.

"That’s why we took so long to approve a script, because it has to tell the truth, and it has to be real," he added. "It also has to be entertaining, because the last thing that Freddie would want is to have something dull out there, you know? But it has to tell the story as it was. And it’s a unique story, because Freddie was close to Mary. He was close to his men friends. He was also very close to us. We were such a tightly knit family, so in a sense, we were Freddie’s closest family — because Queen lasted longer than any of our marriages! I’m sorry, that’s just a fact!"